There was a few years ago ( I believe 2015 ) talk about a so-called “ Nazi gold train “ what was towards the end of WW2 shunted into a tunnel somewhere in Poland.

According to rumours this train supposed to have been loaded with stolen treasures such as gold , paintings and it was thought it also contained the AMBER ROOM which was stolen by the Germans during the Leningrad siege.

I have actually watched a documentary of the Polish government trying to locate the whereabouts of this train but it appears that they could not establish where it was hidden.

Have members of this forum read or watched TV footage about this train and do they think it is just a rumour/conspiracy or was there indeed a Nazi Gold train?

Dirk

Dirk,

I too was engaged on a forum, perhaps this one, about the Nazi gold train in Poland and did research for it. I last heard that the "officials" didn't find anything. I already thought about a government conspiracy (but I do believe that the Americans landed on the moon ), while I didn't hear anything anymore about it...but see our Wikipedia...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gold_train

In May 2016, despite outside expert opinion that no train existed, Koper and Richter secured permission to begin digging at the site from the owners of the property, Polish State Railways.^[20] The excavation commenced on 15 August 2016 with a team of 64 people, including engineers, geologists, chemists, archaeologists and a specialist in military demolitions.^[21] The excavation reportedly cost 116,000 euros or $131,000 and was financed by private sponsors, and with the help of volunteers.^[22]
The dig was halted after seven days when no tracks, tunnel or train were found.^[23] The radar images thought to have been the train were revealed to be natural ice formations. An official from the town admitted tourism was up 44% for the year, and said "the publicity the town has gotten in the global media is worth roughly around $200 million. Our annual budget for promotion is $380,000, so think about that. Whether the explorers find anything or not, that gold train has already arrived." The town mayor was considering naming a roundabout after Koper and Richter.^[23] The search would continue, according to Koper and Richter, in other nearby locations.^[24]

The publicity of the myth, brought more earnings than the cost of the operation . There are other myth makers,  who have understood this evidence too I suppose.
And even a clever one has:
Replica

In 2016, a group of enthusiasts began construction of a full-size replica of a Nazi armored train in an old paper mill located about 15 km from the site of the Koper and Richter embankment dig. It is designed to become a tourist attraction.^[25][26]

A bit as if you believe in the national myth of a nation, this nation becomes in existence.

Kind regards from Paul.

I hadn't heard this story, Paul (i.e. about the gold).  I had heard of the nazis appropriating works of art.  In fact in a 1980s American soap opera Dynasty in one of the later series art treasures stolen by the nazis featured as one of the subplots (the programme got overly stupid towards the end of its run but I liked the earlier seasons despite there being a bit of silliness in the programme even then).

I have a liking for mystery stories with a historical background and I read one The Waxman Murders by Paul Doherty which featured a subplot where some characters were looking for a ship burial where many riches were supposed to be interred.  The idea of a buried ship containing treasure was of course based on the ship buried at Sutton Hoo but I have no idea whether medieval people local to Sutton Hoo had heard stories of a rich burial there or if it was the author practising creative writing.  Of course there was a horde of treasure found in the south of my home county of Staffordshire but I never heard of stories of a hidden horde being told.  Though I live in mid-Staffordshire rather than the south of the county so maybe was not best placed to hear any rumours.  I don't know what prompted the chap (or was it chaps?) with a metal detector to search the field where the Staffordshire Horde was found.  I saw something about it on TV some time ago and somebody (can't remember if it was the treasure hunter himself) said that the person owning the field had said he could look there if he wanted but that somebody had been there not long before and had found absolutely nothing.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

The idea of a buried ship containing treasure was of course based on the ship buried at Sutton Hoo but I have no idea whether medieval people local to Sutton Hoo had heard stories of a rich burial there or if it was the author practising creative writing.  Of course there was a horde of treasure found in the south of my home county of Staffordshire but I never heard of stories of a hidden horde being told.

Surely the idea that wealthy people would often be buried with some of their rich trappings has long been culturally embedded in people's minds - at least in western Europe where burial in a tomb, rather than say cremation or exposure, was the norm. Since at least the middle ages ordinary people were familiar with their local bishop being interred with his bejewelled mitre and pectoral cross, knights with their armour, and rich merchants with gold rings on their fat fingers. Likewise popular stories and myths repeated this idea, such as the legends of King Arthur or Roland and in the tales of Chaucer and Boccaccio. So an obviously important burial or grave, even if you had no idea who might be interred there, was doubtless the source of much local speculation and rumour, as well as being a temptation to do a bit of grave robbing. Isn't that why most ancient barrows and tumuli in Britain (and Egyptian pyramids, Mycenean tombs, Roman sepulchres etc elsewhere) have been dug into and anything valuable plundered many centuries ago?

Meles meles wrote:

LadyinRetirement wrote:

The idea of a buried ship containing treasure was of course based on the ship buried at Sutton Hoo but I have no idea whether medieval people local to Sutton Hoo had heard stories of a rich burial there or if it was the author practising creative writing.  Of course there was a horde of treasure found in the south of my home county of Staffordshire but I never heard of stories of a hidden horde being told.

Surely the idea that wealthy people would often be buried with some of their rich trappings has long been culturally embedded in people's minds - at least in western Europe where burial in a tomb, rather than say cremation or exposure, was the norm. Since at least the middle ages ordinary people were familiar with their local bishop being interred with his bejewelled mitre and pectoral cross, knights with their armour, and rich merchants with gold rings on their fat fingers. Likewise popular stories and myths repeated this idea, such as the legends of King Arthur or Roland and in the tales of Chaucer and Boccaccio. So an obviously important burial or grave, even if you had no idea who might be interred there, was doubtless the source of much local speculation and rumour, as well as being a temptation to do a bit of grave robbing. Isn't that why most ancient barrows and tumuli in Britain (and Egyptian pyramids, Mycenean tombs, Roman sepulchres etc elsewhere) have been dug into and anything valuable plundered many centuries ago?

Meles meles,

and LiR (thanks for the addendum, and BTW haven't we discussed this Suton Hoo story on this forum? I remember to have done research for it)

And about treasure hoards, you had all kind of hoards it seems: burrial hoards, "spaarschatten" (savings hoards?), and temporal hoards in troubled times, I have not a specific name for it...


For instance the treasure of the tomb of Childerik, father of Clovis (Chlodovech)

https://www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/tomb-childeric


saving hoards:
As for instance the silverhoard found in the Dukes' Palace in Bruges. As I am in Raakvlak, an archeaologic society in Bruges I heard from this finding. It is a hoard of silvercoins burried near the Palace.

First I heard that it would be burried there by French nuns residing in Bruges, during the trouble of Maria-Theresia's succession because it was a female. she had to please everybody to have support for her Pragmatic Sanction and in the meantime the French invaded the Austrian Netherlands...They would have been afraid that the French would pick their money...
But now due to a quick research on the internet I found that the newest finding is that the nun's convent was not on this place and due to the weight and all new coins, the new theory is that it is not the nun's treasure but the saving treasure of a private person even acquired at the state immediate after the minting, even at the minting house itself...
http://www.wa-quadriga.be/files/numismatiek/Prinsenhof.pdf
From this site:
https://sites.google.com/site/digitallibrarynumis/subjects/13-belgium-luxumburg/09-coin-finds?tmpl=%2Fsystem%2Fapp%2Ftemplates%2Fprint%2F&showPrintDialog=1



So I have covered the three different hoards that I mentioned...

PS: Meles meles, excuses that I didn't mention you on the Balfour thread, in my question about the rivalry between Lord Asquit and Lord Lloyd. Of course you as an Englishman residing in France, can have ideas about it, as it is for you too your national curriculum...Thanks in advance...and excuses to LiR for supposing that she has not that historical bagage, as she too has to know national history as well as the others...

Kind regards to both from Paul.

Oh there's plenty I don't know Paul.  I wouldn't need to come to this site otherwise.  I don't always remember what I was talking about yesterday let alone type on the board some while back though...I tend to have notes for myself and a 'to do' list.

MM, I remember hearing that many of the Egyptian (pyramid) tombs had been raided but you make a sound point that people living near the tombs of the wealthy would very likely have a clue that there would be valuable grave goods in such tombs.